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Electric Eclectic books are novellas especially for those who love to read but don’t have a lot of time. Lots of genres and lots of authors to choose from. EE books offer you something different and a horror book is being launched this month. Come and join us

Mildred In Disguise, With Diamonds, a crime story by Toni Kief which includes humour.

Mildred expected a comfortable retirement. But when her husband died, his secrets changed everything. She doesn’t have the luxury of a graceful old age, she takes the job the casino offers-undercover security.

The pain leaches into the soil with his blood as he lies silently studying the pines. The long straight trees pierce the clouds with geometric precision. The cold calms him; he no longer feels a need to call for help. Studying the perfection of the moment, he dozes into a mindless peace.

Without warning, he jerks into consciousness with a brilliant electrifying pain. Strangers loudly push and pull trying to move his body. Terrifying sounds, he can’t comprehend. “Stop, stop, why won’t you stop?” He doesn’t want them to disturb the beauty of the welcoming moment. Young men yell and slap him to stay awake. In the confusion, he only wants to go back to the trees. Trying to stop the rude invasion, he fights, but he doesn’t have the strength to lift his arms. As a witness to this assault on his own body, he slips back into the…

Hello and welcome to my blog, Author Interviews. My name is Fiona Mcvie.

Let’s get you introduced to everyone, shall we? Tell us your name. What is your age?

I’m Toni K. Kief, my dad swore to his last day I was named after a stripper in the 40s. Now for my age it is beyond my comprehension to be 69, I think I’m thirty five until I pass a reflective surface.

Fiona: Where are you from?

I was born and raised in Pekin, Illinois. I practically left in my cap and gown. I lived in Peoria, Illinois for long enough to gather some stories, and then moved to Arizona (it’s own short story), Florida and finally settled in the state of Washington, it is so beautiful here, I’m sure I’ll stay.

by Toni Kief

Like a forgotten man on death row, each day is spent waiting for the inevitable. No longer counting hours, days or months, my existence is trapped in a starless night. Strange women awaken me each morning for no other reason than to gather dirty laundry. They roll me, medicate me and pump all my meals through a tube. I have no purpose, no direction, no hope and few dreams, just the passage of time. All of my control has been relinquished; I can no longer sit, and I don’t recognize my hands in the futile attempt to wipe a tear. My survival depends on the labor of others; I have no power to stop this ridiculous dance. No longer blessed with the luxury of movement and conversation, I scream to unhearing ears. Each hour I’m further separated from who I thought was me. All my secrets stripped…

The blinds opened to another sunrise and Ellen watched the whispers of light illuminate the fragile pink petals beneath the tree. The tree signaled the arrival of another spring and a quiet thought niggled into her consciousness. “How many springs will I have?” The eternal question was followed by the restless twitch of dissatisfaction. She listened in silence to the morning birds and felt the daily humiliation of an aging body.

Having arrived early, Ellen sat in the examination room and recognized how she has never felt she belonged. A natural born nomad from a small town, she waited for answers that had nothing to do with her real existence. There is no genetic explanation she always felt the horizon held answers or at least an exotic escape. Caramel colored eyes constantly searched the edge of possibilities for an oasis in the land of mirage, her suitcase always open.

She ignored the constant pain as she mentally catalogued her life’s addresses. Ellen found comfort in looking back instead of forward. She recognized the Midwesterners beat back the vast grasslands into neat rows of commercialized corn, erasing family farms. No trace of the buffalo was left; they were replaced with a conservative fear of reality and Denny’s restaurants. In Arizona she remembered the day and night battle to master the desert with stolen water and concrete. She chuckled that only crazies spoke of the lights that witness their futile war. Everyone else kept silent or denied the nightly visits.

The leather skinned escapees of the northeast hid in Florida’s rows of white houses. They cowered in conditioned air mocking the fantasy and tourist traps, which drew them to AltaVista Boulevard. Each new arrival turned a blind eye to the developers who gobbled up the swamps orphaning original residents in the race to white sands and skin cancer.

It was the northwest that filled Ellen’s glasses with ancient grandeur and a green reward from weeks of gentle rain. Every eye that could tear away from the computer screen was rewarded with the grandest nature has to offer and a call to the outdoors. A land too magnificent to be paved over by civilization.

The sound of the clinic brought her back to the present moment. They don’t need to tell her, Ellen knows she has run out of land and time. Her bucket list of unexplored locations fades, with the satisfaction of Italy, Central America and Ireland. Ellen returns to her present address, ironically it’s on wheels. She will eat a frozen dinner and wait to sleep with a prayer for dreams of inspiration. She ignores the new horizon she didn’t expect so soon. Years of looking for a home were really the journey she signed up for.

Thunder Dog—mad man of the Blue Mesa—had not been seen in seven days. When on the morning after the eighth night he stumbled into town, the people of Pueblo Blue took notice. Dragging a buffalo hide behind him he sent red dust rising, the trailing pelt masking his foot prints with the tracks of its wide sweeping folds. As he walked towards the village well, Thunder Dog sucked his empty gums, his blind eyes fixed on the cloudless sky. His feet alone felt for the worn path to water. Thunder Dog had been born in the rainy season in the year of the bad snow but he could no longer put a date to the event and thus had lost his age. With his tangled silver braids hanging down his bony sides, his age, some thought, could lay anywhere between 70 and 100 years.